On the surface of it, a laundry detergent box sounds like quite a good place to hide loads of cocaine. Because, you know, they're usually full of white powder.

However, one gang in Brazil appears to have made a major balls-up at a key stage of their drug smuggling operation, as 50kg of coke-filled boxes - ostensible containing washing up powder - ended up on the shelves of a store in São Paulo.

A second man then bought a box of the white wash laundry powder from the store, but upon realising it wasn't as clean as he'd thought, he chose to go to the police rather than back to the store.

Police said the cocaine paste could have been made into around 200kg of saleable cocaine. Credit: São Paulo Police

Police subsequently rocked up at the store and Detective Olívio Gomes Lira said the owner attempted to flee in his 4x4 with the cocaine paste tablets, which could have been made into around 200kg of saleable cocaine.

A 49-year-old man was arrested as well as three store employees, with the police proudly tweeting their haul with the caption: "Cleaning the streets of criminals."

Detective Lira said he assumed the cocaine had ended up on shelves by mistake.

According to The Guardian, he said: "I had never found anything like this. It's the first time I found cocaine inside a soap box.

"The first hypothesis we are working on is that someone put these on the shelf for sale by mistake.

"We believe he used the business as the front to wash dirty money."

Clearly then, it is a great time to be a part of the Military Police of the State of São Paulo, where the only thing they enjoy more than a major drug bust is celebrating a major drug bust with a cheeky pun.

Jake Massey

Jake Massey is a journalist at LADbible. He graduated from Newcastle University, where he learnt a bit about media and a lot about living without heating. After spending a few years in Australia and New Zealand, Jake secured a role at an obscure radio station in Norwich, inadvertently becoming a real-life Alan Partridge in the process. From there, Jake became a reporter at the Eastern Daily Press. Jake enjoys playing football, listening to music and writing about himself in the third person.